Confession of a Race Traitor
On being an American, like it or not.
I’ve got a good Anglo-Saxon name except that it’s not mine.
It’s the name of my great grandmother’s second husband who adopted my grandfather and gave it to us all. My real name has gotten misplaced over the years. No one mentioned it and then they were all dead. Rumor has it was German-Jew.
An ethnic cocktail anyway. Raised as a white man in a time (pre-civil rights) and a place (the American south) that it mattered a great deal, I’m a goodly part non-white (native American) and part somewhere in between (Jewish).
There have been numerous times when I’ve witnessed the work of white men and clung tightly to my non-white parts saying, “I’m not one of them.”
I formally gave up being a white man in 1973 on moral grounds; quit being an American and a Christian too, for the same reasons. Went ethnic and cosmic for a time calling myself a Hebrew/Indian resident of the planet Earth, but don’t worry about such things too much anymore; pass time without religion or politics.
I still think nationalism is a mistake, but travel on an American passport without qualm. It’s necessary and it’s the one I was issued. I just don’t think it should give me a break on the ticket.
Nowadays when it comes up I term myself just one more Homo sapiens sapiens variegated.
A hooker I knew in Bangkok took me to visit her son, showing me a snap of the father, some Chicano GI. She compared her black hair to his, their similar olive skins and said, “Mexican same same Thai.”
I agreed not to be polite, but from a simple and profound belief that we are all same same Thai.
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